The night felt like it was swallowing whole the lost souls of partygoers — people chasing illusions in dimly lit clubs as if their very existence hinged on it. Friday was only just beginning, pulsing with life, even as the rest of the city seemed ready to drift into sleep. The music didn’t need massive speakers to be felt; it ricocheted off brick walls and reverberated through the air like heat waves, wrapping itself around bodies like an invisible spell. People moved — out of sync, yet strangely together — like some mosaic of limbs fused by rhythm, surrendered entirely to the bass, to the lights, to the moment.

You knew that atmosphere too well. You could almost map it blindfolded — the bitter-sweet tang of alcohol on your lips, the sticky warmth of the dance floor, the clash of perfumes that merged into a single, indistinguishable cloud. The bartender slid your drink across the counter with a nod and a half-smile that said “Back again?” and yeah, of course you were. Life was heavy — for everyone, probably — and everyone needed somewhere to unload the weight. For some, it was therapy. For you, it was this. A cocktail of noise and numbness. A ritual. You told yourself it wasn’t healthy, but like a phone drained of charge, you always came back, plugging into the chaos for just enough voltage to survive another week. Lately, life had been tossing too many obstacles in your path, and this place, with all its beautiful decay, offered a strange kind of peace.

She hoped tonight might be different — that maybe she’d meet someone who didn’t treat her like a checkpoint on a blurry night. Someone with depth, someone with stories instead of pickup lines. The shallow ones were always the loudest. The types who wore aesthetic like armor but had nothing behind the eyes, it was the hollow echo of people who worshipped surface-level perfection and never dared to look deeper. All surface, no soul. It exhausted her. It hurt, in a quiet, growing way, she couldn’t always explain.

The air inside had become stifling—thick like a tightly sealed plastic bag—so she went outside, needing to breathe something other than perfume or sweat, catching the cool air as if it could reset her body. The street was almost empty, lit by the soft glow of a lone streetlight that hummed quietly above her. She leaned against the cold stone wall and checked her phone. 10:57 p.m. Still too early to end the evening, too late to pretend she hadn't given up yet.

Then she saw him.

A man, just a few meters away, exhaling a slow cloud of smoke that drifted like ghost breath in the chilled London air. He wasn’t looking at her — just quietly observing the windows across the street, as if the answers to something unspoken were hidden behind the glass. His stance was casual, one leg bent, shoulders slightly slouched, cigarette cradled between his fingers with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before.

Even in the dark, she picked up on the details: a white T-shirt under a timeworn brown jacket, flare jeans that looked like they’d lived through stories, not trends. His hair was a mess — the good kind — tousled by the wind, thick and a little wild, like he hadn’t looked in a mirror all day and somehow still looked intentional. He didn’t seem like part of this era, not really. More like someone who stepped out of an old Polaroid. There was something magnetic in how still he stood, entirely removed from the nightlife world buzzing behind him.